Saturable Bragg reflector mode-locking of Cr/sup 4+/:YAG laser pumped by a diode-pumped Nd:YVO/sub 4/ laser

Summary form only given. Mode-locked solid-state lasers with broadband gain have led to rapid advancements in the production of the ultrashort pulses. In 1991, Shestakov et al. reported the first room-temperature cw lasing of Cr/sup 4+/:YAG/sup /in the 550-nm telecommunications window of optical fiber. Kerr-lens mode-locking (KLM) of Cr/sup 4+/:YAG has produced pulses as short as 46 fs. In this paper, we demonstrate self-starting passive femtosecond mode-locking of Cr/sup 4+/:YAG using a nonlinear mirror called a saturable Bragg reflector (SBR). We pump the Cr/sup 4+/:YAG, whose absorption band is centered around 1000 nm, with a diode-pumped Nd:YVO/sub 4/ laser. We discuss the SBR mode-locking of this laser and compare with KLM techniques.